A teacher who worked a short time as a stripper has reached a $45,000 settlement in a federal lawsuit that charged West Ottawa Public Schools fired her after learning of her previous work.

West Ottawa Superintendent Tom Martin said to go to trial would have cost the district up to four times that amount.

By Staff reports

Holland Sentinel

By Staff reports

Posted May. 30, 2013 at 12:01 AM
Updated May 30, 2013 at 5:39 AM

By Staff reports

Posted May. 30, 2013 at 12:01 AM
Updated May 30, 2013 at 5:39 AM

Holland

A teacher who worked a short time as a stripper has reached a $45,000 settlement in a federal lawsuit that charged West Ottawa Public Schools fired her after learning of her previous work.

West Ottawa Superintendent Tom Martin said to go to trial would have cost the district up to four times that amount.

“What we did do was we settled to avoid an expensive, lengthy trial and bring closure to something that had been going on for a long, long time,” Martin said. “If we didn’t settle, then we would go through a trial that would be very costly.”

Susan Brennan was an English teacher with West Ottawa and was fired in 2010 after the district filed tenure charges against her that included dishonesty in grading and failing to use proper lesson plans and grading methods.

She filed the suit in November 2012.

Brennan has denied the allegations and said she was targeted because she worked as a stripper while on a leave of absence.

On a webpage Brennan set up in 2011, she details and responds to each of the 11 charges the district said constituted "just and reasonable cause for her discharge, one of them being her work as a stripper at adult establishments in Grand Rapids and Lansing."

“I take full responsibility for my actions regarding this matter,” Brennan wrote. “It was the single most disastrous, most humiliating, and most damaging mistake of my life, one that I will regret for the rest of my life. It has followed me for the last four years, and I have no choice but to deal with this issue head-on.”